Psalm 91

This year we are working on just one passage of scripture to memorize. I gave the boys a choice of three different passages and after looking at them they were unanimous in choosing Psalm 91.
Here it is with pictures.

1. He who dwells in the shelter of the of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the almighty.

2. I will say of the Lord he is my refuge and my fortress my God in whom I trust.

3. Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence.

4a.  He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge;

4b. his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

5.  You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day

6. nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.

7.  A thousand may fall at your side, ten thouseand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.

8.  You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.

9.  If you make the Most High your dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, 

10.  Then no harm will come to you, no disaster will come near your tent.

11.  For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;

12.  They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

13. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra, You will tramble the great lion and the serpent,

14.  "Because he loves me," says the Lord, "I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name."

15. "He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.

 16. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation."

To begin, each week, twice a week we spent 20-30 minutes learning one verse. I got a great idea for how to learn verses while observing a  friend teach memory verses to his Sunday school class.

This is what he did:
1.  He wrote the verse on a white board and then all the kids repeated the verse with him.
2. Then one child was selected to erase one word.
3. Then the verse was repeated again.
4. They continued to do this until all the words were erased one by one.

While I watched the class do this I saw eyes brighten, eager hands rised to erase, and best of all each child was paying attention for the first time that morning.

So, we did the same thing in our homeschool. (my boys did not always pay attention but most of the time it was better than other methods I have tried) The boys aim to erase the biggest words first, which I found humorous. The first lesson they erased one word at a time then at the second lesson they erased two words at a time.
Sometimes when we said the verses together we use funny voices,
Sometimes only one guy says the verse by himself.
Sometimes I gave rewards if they can say the verse PERFECTLY when we are all done erasing words for that day.

Always, we recited the verses together from verse 1 up to the verse we were learning at the front of the lesson.

We just finished this week with verse 16. For the rest of the year, (we have 5 months still left in our school year) I have this plan in mind......

Next, I plan to use Montessori cards with the pictures above to become more familar with each verse, and how they follow each other  in the passage.

To become familar with the verses we can  play games with them like go fish and you have to say the whole verse to get the pair, or concentration with the same rules the verse must be said to get the pair. We can also cut a set apart and practice matching the picture with the verse.

To begin learning more than ne verse at a time, we can put the verses in order (then the number of the verse will be marked out) and practice saying two or three verses together.

After that I have made a copywork notebook called  My copywork notebook of Psalm 91 for the boys to write the verses. By this time we should be almost finsihed with our Mcguffey readers so we could do  A Charlotte Mason Reading Lesson of Psalm 91.  Along side all of that recitation at breakfast of the verses as they are learning them should show if they really have it in their heads and I hope their hearts as well. First we recite verse 1, then verse1-2, then verses 1-3 etc. until we have the whole chapter under our belt.

 I used my pro-click binder to bind these. The front cover and last page are printed onto  heavy cardstock and finally a plastic cover on the front and the back.

If you look at the fine print you can see we use Fine Print to print these out. Fine print is FREE and it is a very useful tool in printing out documents. It has three features which I love.
1. you can easily delete pages you do not want.
2. you can easily format to rint double sided
3. when you create edge margins etc. you can easily see what it will look like before you print.

 On the very back page which is cardstock I added a library pocket to store the Montessori/memory cards in.

I'll blog about the results at the end of the year. Happy memorizing!